About 20 PAS members today held a demonstration today outside the British High Commission to oppose a knighthood given to author Salman Rushdie.

The protesters held a a 30-minute protest during which they shouted slogans and handed a one-page memorandum to a British envoy.

"Go to hell Britain! Go to hell Rushdie!" the group yelled as police with riot shields and helmets watched. The police contingent was about as large as the demonstrators'.

Rushdie's knighthood for services to literature was announced Saturday.

"In the name of peace and mutual respect, we demand that the award be withdrawn, and the British government distance itself from a provocateur like Salman Rushdie," Abdul Hadi Awang, the PAS president, said in a written statement distributed at the protest.

"For a British government to sponsor such a deliberate anti-Islam stance will only further deepen ill feelings between Islam and the West," Abdul Hadi said.

Controversy over the Rushdie knighthood escalated into a full-blown diplomatic row Tuesday as Iran and Pakistan summoned Britain's ambassadors to protest, drawing a retort from London.

Rushdie is accused by some Muslims of blaspheming Islam in his novel "The Satanic Verses" which triggered an international furore when it was first published in 1988.

He has been living since then under the shadow of a death sentence imposed by Iran's late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini which has never been formally revoked.